1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for managing phone calls, and more particularly to interactive voice response enhanced out-calling.
2. Discussion of Background Art
Call centers are increasingly used to process incoming calls from a variety of sources. These sources include, existing customers, potential customers, suppliers, vendors, and many others. Such systems often use Interactive Voice Response (IVR) software as a first step in processing an incoming call before connecting the caller with a human operator. The IVR software improves the call center's efficiency and reduces a number of human operators required to handle the incoming calls by gathering a set of standardized information from the caller which can then be immediately presented to the operator upon connection to the caller.
However, such efficient software support is not available for aiding a call center's outgoing calls. Call centers have a need to place such outgoing calls for a variety of reasons, including conducting market intelligence, customer surveys, quality audits, and telemarketing activities. Operators currently spend a significant amount of time placing calls that are not only answered by fax machines, answering machines, and data ports many times, but are also often answered by individuals who have no interest in the subject matter of the call. As a result a significant amount of operator time is wasted.
Should an individual interested in the call's subject matter be found, such people are often handled by the call center in a very unprofessional way. For example, a called party is often asked the same set of questions several times during the call as the party is passed to different portions of the call center's out-calling system. This is because the party's information is lost during each transition.
Another problem with current automated out-calling systems is that they often place a called party on hold as the system attempts to route the called party to a human operator, who may or may not be available for several minutes. Such limitations in current call center out-calling systems often so frustrate even interested called parties that they hang up after a short time, resulting in another lost chance to achieve the call center's objectives.
In response to the concerns discussed above, what is needed is a system and method for automated out-calling that overcomes the problems of the prior art.